


The Machine

by axumun



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 09:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axumun/pseuds/axumun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three minutes every day, he is not himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Machine

The bright lights fade to gray and then to black. The defeaning voices become the hush of rain, and then they are silent.

Ribbons of color are chasing white sparks behind his eyes. His hands are clutching at nothing and holding on for dear life.

For three minutes every day, he is not himself. He is not human. He is extraterrestrial, extraordinary, a genius.

The clock is ticking, then it hammers, then it fades to piano keys and pealing bells and perhaps the purr of a kitten. The ribbons become satin sheets, and they wrap around him, seep into his skin, pulling tighter and tighter until he can't breathe, but he doesn't need air.

The sparks become fire, but not one that burns; a fire meant to comfort and warm and give light. There's a hum of machinery that whiplashes him back into reality for a split second, but the fire pulls him back, and he's falling....

_...falling..._

_**...falling...** _

But he doesn't land. His feet are dangling and his body is suspended, as if he's underwater, and he tries to swim up but the fire is wrapping around him now, reducing his nerves to ash...but it feels good, so good, and it's halfway over because he hears a loud **CLICK!** over in the Real World.

The fire pours from his mouth and a light appears in the distance. He's spinning, pirouetting, but his body hasn't moved. He raises his head and watches the light grow.

The ribbons are back, streaks of color striking his consciousness like bolts of lightning, except there are no rain clouds, there's no cold front. There is only the satin and the fire, and he distantly realizes that the machine is picking through his memories again, showing him brief flashes of past lovers who, for three minutes a day, never broke his heart.

The satin unravels and falls in slow motion onto a bed, and he sees the faintest outline of a woman, but he doesn't know who she is. He closes his eyes again, opens them, and he's panting and hot and there's a warm, soft weight under him. Her face is hidden by the black.

Another blink and he's surrounded by white, as if he's been shackled to a wall. He likes predicting what comes next; he waits for the woman...but she never comes.

The fire stalks him from behind a curtain and grabs hold of him with no warning, invisible and untouchable. Electricity pours from his eyes, waves of searing pleasure and warmth pulsing in his arms and his chest and that flaccid, useless, numb thing between his legs.

Then it's over.

His eyes open for real this time, and the bright lights are back. Voices are whispering. The machine beneath his back is hard and cold and his skin is damp, frigid.

"Thank you, sir, see you again tomorrow." An aging nurse hauls him from the machine and, with a firm hand pushing against his back, guides him to the exit. There's a line of people facing the machine, a line extending to the door and zigzagging back and forth three times.

*

The Real World is gray and nothing is pretty.

There are no sounds and the sun never shines.

He's driving ~~home~~ to his house, in his car, one prison to another.

In a few minutes he'll be alone, buried in paperwork that machines can do, chokes by his suit and tie, counting the seconds until he returns to the clinic the next day...

And the next day...

And the machine will wait for him.


End file.
